Web design is the process of planning and creating a website. Text, images,
digital media and interactive elements are shaped by the web designer to produce
the page seen on the web browser. Web designers utilize markup language, most notably
HTML for structure and CSS for presentation to develop pages that can be read by
web browsers.

As a whole, the process of web design includes conceptualization, planning, post-production,
research, advertising as well as media control that is applied to the pages within
the site by the designer or group of designers with a specific purpose. The site
itself can be divided into its main page, also known as the home page, which cites
the main objective as well as highlights of the site's daily updates; which also
contains hyperlinks that functions to direct viewers to a designated page within
the site's domain.

Best practices

Ideally, web designers should strive to write code that is valid HTML and CSS. In
doing so it makes it easier to correct problems, edit pages, or update pages. Additionally,
keeping your HTML files and CSS files separate helps to make it easier to make changes.
For example, having a separate CSS file allows for aesthetic changes to be made
to the entire site rather than to just a single page. If CSS rules are included
within a single HTML page, changes would have to be made to each and every page.
The reasoning is that HTML should only be used for raw content and CSS be used to
manipulate the content for aesthetic style. This is true for scripting files as
well.

Changes and updates

Initial website designs normally need small tweaks and changes after they go live,
but major updates and re-designs may be undertaken periodically.

Changes to websites almost always provoke a backlash from its regular users. The
reason for this is primarily that change is disruptive to the user: for example,
the link that the user previously learned was always in the lower left corner is
now "missing", and the user must search the page to discover its new location. The
user is disoriented, frustrated, slowed down, and needs time to learn and adapt
to the new arrangement. On websites with users who spend significant amounts of
time each day using, like Facebook or Wikipedia, users normally respond to even
moderate changes with noisy protests and empty threats to leave the website.

Within a few weeks or months, however, most users have adapted to the changes and
no longer object to them.For example, the signature feature of Facebook, a news
feed, drew millions of complaints when it first appeared, but users now say that
it is an important and highly desirable feature.

Major websites may try to minimize this with phased rollouts of changes, testing
the new design with a small number of randomly selected users, describing the importance
of the upcoming changes in advance, and offering users the option of keeping the
old design until they have acclimated to the new one. However, the primary cure
for complaints is simply to wait.